THE OTHER STORY might perhaps be considered a variation on the same theme: no doubt it was suggested by an incident as the first. It was told as a personal experience of the narrator’s. He said:
I was traveling [a good many years ago] in France and found myself at a place called Moulins. I went into a curiosity shop [in a street] not far off the Hotel de Ville to inquire the price of a drawing I had noticed in the window. The man asked more than I wanted to give so I began looking at other things. There were a few old books, all totally uninteresting to me; but, as it turned out, there was nothing else in the shop that I cared in the least to acquire and so by way of doing something to justify the trouble I had given, I bought five or six of the smallest of these books.
Next day I went by train to Troyes [Nevers] and when I was tired of looking out of the window I opened my handbag and took out at random one of my purchases. It was a [n odd] volume of an old novel called Caroline de Lichtenfeld: the sort of book that is rarely disturbed from any resting place it may have found, by me at any rate: for all I know it may be a standard work.
I began at the beginning and turned over forty [odd] pages or so: the story made very little progress. Then my eye was attracted by some building we were passing, and I studied the landscape for two or three miles. After that, I returned to my book and noted that I had reached page 43 and was in the middle of a dialogue which ran thus:
“Où descendez-vous?”
“Bon,” dit-il, “vous avez sans doute commandé une chambre?”
“Ah, non,” dis-je, “je n’y avais pas même songé. Mais cela s’arrangera sans doute. La ville ne serait pas en fête ces jours-ci?”
Il haussa les épaules. “Qui sait?” fit-il. “Parlons d’autre chose: Vous la connaissez, je pense, la ville de [Nevers]?”
“Je n’ai fait que passer par là il y a dix ans.”
At this point I turned over the page and at the same time glanced up. My eye fell on my opposite neighbor who was an elderly lady, stout, and wearing a slight black mustache and a highly determined expression. She was not otherwise interesting. I resumed my reading: the words were curiously appropriate.
“Vous regardiez votre vis-à-vis,” continua-t-il.
“Eh oui! Qu’y a-t-il de singulier en cela.”
“En effet, très peu de chose, seulement, [vous la verrez égorgés ce soir] savezvous où elle demeure?”
“[Monsieur! ne parlez pas de la sorte] Comment donc?—moi qui la vois pour la première fois.”
“Eh bien. Je vous le dirai. C’est à Marcilly-le-Hayer sur la place. La maison à trois pignons.”
“[Vraiment?] C’est [bien] possible: mais pour vrai vous dire elle me paraît pas bien intéressante.”
“A very long-winded dialogue this,” I thought, “not much concentration about it”; and I turned over a leaf or two to see where we were getting to. I found that the personage who had volunteered the information about the woman in the book was now disgorging more—in fact was giving her whole biography. She had been a laborer’s daughter in the village of Marcilly-le-Hayer. Her good looks had attracted the notice of a middle-aged man who owned a good deal of property in the place, a M. Giraud—Émile Giraud (a name which to me seemed unaccountably familiar). He was, said the book, a thoroughly reputable, honest, and amiable person: and his love for the girl—Eugeiné Dupont—was sincere. The match was of course an extremely advantageous one for her. She had no lover of her own rank whom she was in the least inclined to favor, and the marriage took place. [Eighteen months afterward] After nearly three years of what seemed to all their acquaintances a very happy married life, M. Giraud disappeared from Marcilly leaving absolutely no trace. [Like many country people of his class] He used to leave a not inconsiderable sum of ready money in the house toward the end of each week to pay his men. It was on a Friday that he was found to be missing, and the money was gone too. The widow was obliged to procure a further supply from the branch of the Société Genérale in the village. She felt the loss of her husband acutely and never married again.
“Société Genérale,” I said to myself: “I didn’t think that existed in the eighteenth century.”
But, said the book, in continuation, if any one were to go to Marcillyle-Hayer and call at the house with the three gables, and ask [to see] the mistress, and ask her what she keeps under the pavement in the further corner of the stable, he would then find out whether she was interesting or not.
“It would be a very impertinent question to ask anyone,” I thought, and with that I put the book away, and took another.
The train to Troyes was very full, and I realized to my disgust, before my journey was over, that a large cattle-show was going on there. I had very great difficulty in finding any room at all: at last I was accommodated with a bed in a rather second rate establishment called the Hotel Terminus. The only part of this place which had any pretension to novelty was the name which was palimpsested over the door. I amused myself by deciphering the old sign, still partly visible underneath: it read “Hotel des Ambassadeurs.”
After exploring Troyes, I found I had a day or two to spare, and I studied the map of the department. There I found, as you might find, the name of Marcilly-le-Hayer occupying a very prominent place in the midst of the uplands which no railway touches. I believe—I say I believe—that I had forgotten all about the story in my book in the days which had passed since I read it. But I now recollected it, and this, combined with the fact that there seemed to be some interesting buildings in and near Marcilly, determined me to go there. I bicycled thither—a laborious ride—and arrived late in the afternoon. There was an inn on the Place which was quite satisfactory and I had, of course, come prepared to spend a night there. Immediately opposite to the window of my room was a house with three gables.
In the evening, I had some talk with the people of the house, and asked if there were any interesting features in the town. I was told of a very fine carved chimney-piece “chez Mme. Giraud.” And where did she live? I naturally asked (we were at the door of the inn). “Straight opposite,” said my informants, pointing to the house with the three gables.
I pondered and pondered: but no light came. The persistence of names of [unreadable word] in a place like Marcilly must be a marked feature. One other question was inevitable. What, I asked, was Mme. Giraud’s maiden name? “Dupont, Monsieur. Eugeiné Dupont.”
When I got back to my luggage at Troyes, I looked again at the volume of Caroline de Lichtenfeld. It was a defective copy, pp 33-80 were absent—had evidently never been bound up in it. On the flyleaf in a feminine hand was the name: Émile Giraud.